A Look Back

∎Automation may be coming to First Church in Northampton in the form of electrification of the town clock in the steeple. The City Council’s property committee voted last night to seek $500 in its 1963 budget for this purpose.

∎A small local industry would like to relocate to a city-owned tract in Florence being considered by the National Guard as a site for a new armory. Mayor Wallace J. Puchalski said he is of the opinion that both the armory and the industry could be located on the so-called “ice pond” tract off Spring Street.

25 Years Ago

∎State and local officials are expected to meet here next week to discuss plans for an ice-skating rink in the arena building at the Three-County Fairgrounds. However, preliminary figures show the project already may be short of money.

∎The time capsule removed from the cornerstone of the Hampshire County Courthouse last month to commemorate the building’s 100th birthday was scheduled to be replaced yesterday. But Mother Nature put a freeze on it. The bitter cold makes it impossible to replace the stone properly right now.

10 Years Ago

∎One year after President Bush signed the far-reaching No Child Left Behind bill into law, local educators say it is failing on at least two counts. The biggest effect of the new education provisions has been an increase in paperwork, they say. Many also complain that the law amounts to an “unfunded mandate,” requiring changes and improvements to educational programs without providing enough money to carry them out.

∎Calling President Bush’s recommendation that the nation’s 10.5 million medical personnel be vaccinated for smallpox a policy that makes “no sense at all,” Cooley Dickinson Hospital announced Thursday that it will not encourage its 200 employees to get the vaccine. Bush in December announced that as a precaution against biological terrorism, health care workers should be vaccinated.